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News round up

What with the holidays and my month of traveling to various
marriage celebrations (the third will be this weekend), I am have fallen a bit
behind in the U.S. Catholic web round ups.
(The last time I was in the office on a Thursday or a Friday was before
Christmas!) Apologies.-MMG

It's impossible to recap the week without acknowledging the
horrific devastation that struck Haiti on Tuesday. While no one could have
predicted or prevented (or caused-not even God, ahem Pat Robertson)
the 7.0 earthquake, the sheer amount destruction left behind should cause all
of us to tremble and pledge to stand in solidarity with the Haitian people as
they try to rebuild. We can provide immediate assistance by donating money.
But in order to assure a more hopeful and just future for Haiti, some experts
are calling for the cancelation of Haiti's debt . I'm inclined to think that it's going to take more than that; namely, the U.S.
needs to stop flooding Haiti's market with government subsidized rice.
(That article says that importing rice is "[g]reat for farmers in places like
Arkansas and Missouri but devastating for farmers in the Artibonite valley," but
in truth, subsidized crops aren't good for anyone in the long run, except for giant
industrial ag corporations.)

Last week, the New York Times reported that the American Law
Institute, the group that "created the intellectual framework for the modern
capital justice system almost 50 years ago" has named their death penalty
efforts a failure and is giving them up. NPR also reported that the number of death penalty cases in 2009 declined "making it the year with the fewest people sent to death row
since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976." Even Texas the once
notoriously the country's leader in death sentences, executed only 9 inmates
last year (way down from the average of 34 of in the 90s). (We profiled a man working with death row
inmates in Texas for this month's feature on Catholic workers.)

Austria is experiencing a Mass exodus . While We Are Church claims the reason Pope Benedict XVI's
lifting of the excommunication of the controversial Bishop Richard Williamson,
Vatican officials insist it is because they don't want to pay the church tax
charged to registered believers.